Agora Hackathon: Beyond Voice [October 2025]

Welcome to the Agora Hackathon! This hackathon challenges you to build voice-first agents that do more than just speak. You’ll use Agora’s Conversational AI Engine as the backbone of your agents, integrate ElevenLabs for realistic and expressive speech, bring your agent to life with HeyGen’s lifelike video avatars, and deploy your frontend with Appwrite’s all-in-one development platform.

The Agora Hackathon kicks off on Monday, October 6 at 6 PM Pacific Time and runs until Thursday, October 9 at 3 PM Pacific Time. No submissions will be accepted after 3 PM on Thursday.

Teams are allowed to be 1-4 members.

Teams must be registered here: https://form.typeform.com/to/wMYc4KxQ

This repository serves as the central hub for hackathon submissions and resources.

Theme: Beyond Voice—Agents That Do More

In this theme, you’ll build a real-time, multimodal voice agent that does more than just respond — it listens, thinks, and performs. Your agent should integrate all core technologies to deliver a truly interactive, voice-to-voice AI experience:

• Agora Conversational AI Engine — Handle live, low-latency voice capture, transmission, and delivery.
• Groq LLM — Process text inputs with ultra-fast inference to generate intelligent, context-aware responses in real time.
• ElevenLabs TTS — Convert Groq’s responses into expressive, human-like speech with emotional depth and clarity.
• HeyGen Streaming Avatar API — Bring your agent to life with a photorealistic avatar that reacts naturally to speech and emotion.
• Appwrite — Deploy your frontend and backend on a unified platform with built-in real-time databases, authentication, and hosting for your web or mobile app.

Your project must integrate all five partner technologies. Submissions that omit any of these partners will not qualify for judging. Think creatively about how to orchestrate voice, avatars, and real-time actions to deliver an immersive user experience.

Focus Areas

• Real‑time voice and video communication
• Expressive TTS and visual avatars
• Multi‑modal AI interactions & analytics
• Interactive live streaming & gamification

Recommended Technologies

• Agora Conversational AI Engine
• Agora RTC SDK
• Appwrite
• ElevenLabs TTS
• Groq
• HeyGen Video Avatar

Follow the steps below to fork, develop, and submit your project.

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📌 Submission Guidelines

1. Fork this Repository

Click the Fork button on the top right to create a copy of this repository under your GitHub account.

2. Clone Your Forked Repository

After forking, clone the repository to your local machine.

git clone https://github.com/YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME/SFTechWeek-2025-Hackathon.git
cd SFTechWeek-2025-Hackathon

3. Create Your Team Folder

Inside the submissions/ directory, create a new folder using your team name.
Example:

submissions/ ├── team-name/ │ ├── README.md # (Required: Describe your project) │ ├── demo.mp4 # (Required: A 1–2 minute demo video focusing on core features and work done) │ ├── src/ # (Your source code) │ └── docs/ # (Any documentation or images)

4. Work on Your Project

• Develop your project inside your team folder.
• Include a README.md file explaining your project, its setup, and usage. Include any special instructions to run it.
• Include a 1–2 minute demo video focusing on core features and work done in the docs/ folder.

5. Commit and Push Changes

git add .
git commit -m "Submission commit - Team [Your Team Name]"
git push

6. Submit via Pull Request

1. Go to your forked repo on GitHub.
2. Click the "New Pull Request" button.
3. Set the base repository to AgoraIO-Community/SFTechWeek-2025-Hackathon and compare it with your forked branch.
4. In the PR description, include:
   • Team Name
   • Project Name
   • A brief summary of the project
   • Any special instructions of features to focus on or to avoid because they may not be finished. (If applicable)
5. Click "Create Pull Request" to submit your project.

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🏆 Judging Criteria

Projects will be evaluated based on:

✅ Technical Innovation – How effectively the project pushes the boundaries of voice, avatars, and real-time AI interaction.

✅ Experience Design – How natural, engaging, and immersive the agent feels for users.

✅ Integration & Use of Partner Tech – Correct and innovative use of Agora Conversational AI Engine, ElevenLabs, HeyGen, and Appwrite.

✅ Deployment & Documentation – Working prototype deployed on Appwrite, clear documentation, and ease of testing by judges.

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❓ Need Help?

For any questions, join our Discord channel. The team will be monitoring the channel for questions and feedback.

Happy hacking and good luck! 🚀